David Drake - Conqueror

He made a quick check of the gear laid out on each of the straw pallets. Waterproof blanket, blanket, long sword-bayonet, cartridge pouches with seventy-five rounds, another fifty in a cardboard box, entrenching spade or short pick, mess tin, canteen, haversack, spare clothing if any, bandage packet, blessed chlorine powder for purifying water, three days' hardtack. .

The corporal picked up one of the Armory rifles and stuck his thumb into the loop of the lever before the handgrip. A push and the block went snick , snapping down at the front so the grooved ramp on top led to the chamber. He peered down the barrel, raising it to the light. No rust, not too much oil. He snapped the lever back: clack . A pull on the trigger brought a sharp click as the pin fell on the empty space where a cartridge would lie in combat.

"Not too bad, Saynchez," Minatelli said. "Awright, git the kit on."

A chorus of grumbles. "Yor all gone soft," he said relentlessly. "Be off yor backsides soon."

He swung his own on. Webbing belt, pouches, shoulder-straps, haversack and bayonet went on like a coat; all you had to do was snap the buckle on the belt. Everything else went into the blanket roll; you rolled that up into a sausage, strapped the roll shut with leather thongs, then bent it into a U-shape and slung it over your left shoulder with the tied-together ends at your right hip. He grunted a little as it settled down, shrugging until it rode properly; you could wear blisters the size of a cup if you didn't adjust it just right.

An officer and bugler came down the main hatchway. The brassy notes of Full Kit and Ready to Move Out sounded, loud through the dim crowded spaces. The troops erupted in cursing, crowding movement, all but the most experienced veterans- they'd gotten ready beforehand. Minatelli grinned at his squad.

"Happy now?"

It was a lot easier to put your gear on when a couple of hundred others weren't trying to do the same, and that in a hold packed with temporary pinewood bunks.

Saynchez snorted. He was a grizzled man in his thirties, one of two in the squad who'd been out east with the 24th the last time. He'd also been up and down the ladder of rank to sergeant and back to private at least twice; it was drink, mostly.

"We goin' east fer garrison, er t'fight?" he asked.

"Messer Raj didn't tell me, t'last time he had me over fer afternoon kave n' cakes," Minatelli said dryly.

He wouldn't be looking forward to garrison duty, himself. Some preferred it; in between active campaigns Civil Government infantry were assigned farms from the State's domains, with tenant families to work them. You had to find your own keep from the proceeds, minus stoppages for equipment. Provided your officers were honest — which Major Felasquez was, thank the Spirit — the total came to about the same as active-service cash pay. About what a laborer made, with more security and less work. But it sounded dull , especially to a city boy like him, and he hadn't joined up to be bored.

Mind you, some of the fighting in the Western Territories had been more interesting than he really liked. He remembered the long teeth of the Brigade curaissiers' dogs, the lanceheads rippling down, sweat stinging his eyes, and the sun-hot metal of the rifle as he brought it up to aim.

"Word is," he went on, relenting, "that t'wogboys is over the frontier. Messer Raj's bein' set out to put 'em back."

Saynchez shaped a silent whistle. Minatelli looked at him hopefully; the far eastern frontier with the Colony was only a rumor to him. Saynchez had been with the 24th when Messer Raj whipped the ragheads and killed their king.

"Them's serious business," the older private said. "Them wogs is na no joke."

"Messer Raj done whup 'em before," one of the other soldiers said.

"Serious," Saynchez said softly. "Real serious."

Minatelli slung his rifle. The bugle sounded again: Fall in.

* * *

A locomotive let out a high shrill scream from its steam whistle. Its two man-high driving wheels spun, throwing twin streams of sparks from the strap-iron rails beneath. The long funnel with its bulbous crown belched steam and black smoke, thick and smelling of burnt tar. Behind it eight iron-and-wood cars lurched against the chain fastenings that bound them together. They were heaped with coal, and heavy. It took more wheel-spinning and lurching halts before the train finally gathered way and rocked southward through the city towards the Hemmar Valley and the long journey east.

Raj's hound Horace snarled slightly at the train. He ran a soothing hand down the beast's neck, clamping his legs slightly around its barrel. Other riders were having more trouble with their animals. Hounds tended to have good nerves; it was one of their strong points. They also tended to do exactly as they pleased whenever they felt like it, but everything was tradeoffs. Horace moved forward at a swinging walk, stepping high over the rails, his plate-sized paws crunching on the cinder and crushed rock of the roadbeds.

More coal trains pulled out, building up the reserves at the stations farther east along the Central Rail; barges lay beside the dock, heaped with the dusty black product of the Coast Range mines. Other trains were making up, of slat-sided boxcars with 40 hombes/8 dawg freshly stenciled on their sides; forty men, or eight riding dogs. The railyards sprawled along a good part of East Residence's harbor. Barholm Clerett had built more kilometers of line than the previous ten Governors combined; whatever you said of him, he was a builder. Temples, forts, railways — the great Central Line from the capital to Sandoral completed at last — dams, canals. Much of it financed with the plunder from Raj's campaigns, and dug by captives from them.

It was a mild early-summer day, the sky blue except for a few puffs of high cloud, both moons up — Maxiluna was three-quarters full, Miniluna a narrow crescent. Like the one on the Colony's green banner, the crescent of Islam.

Raj shook his head at the thought. Beyond the moons were the Stars, and the Spirit of Man of the Stars.

Today there were more soldiers than railway men in the marshaling yard. Men heaved rectangular crates onto the bed of a railcar. Each had the Star of the Civil Government stenciled on its side, and 11mm 1000 rnds . A group of artillerymen — they were stripped to their baggy maroon pants, but those had a crimson stripe down the outside of the leg — was manhandling a field gun onto the flatcar behind, heaving it up a ramp of planks and lashing the tall iron-shod wheels down to eyebolts on the deck. Oilcloth covers were strapped over the muzzle and breech, to keep dust and moisture out of the mechanism. Near-naked slaves with iron collars embossed with Central Rail were pulling in handcarts loaded with rations: hardtack, raisins, blocks of goat cheese, sacks of dried meat, barrels of salt fish. A farrier-sergeant of the 5th Descott came by leading a string of riding dogs on a chain lead snapped to their bridles; they surged away in wuffling alarm as a locomotive hooted, and the man clung until his feet were nearly off the ground.

"Pochita! Fequez! Ye bitches brood, quiet a'down, er I'll- sorry, Messer Raj —"

"Carry on, sergeant."

"— I'll skin yer lousy hides, quiet there."

The giant carnivores calmed, but their ears stayed back, and lips curled away from teeth as long as a man's finger. Few of the beasts had ever seen a steam engine before, much less ridden in a train. For that matter, few of the troopers had either, even the natives of the Gubernio Civil ; most of them were countrymen, the cavalry from border areas or backwaters like Descott County. What the half-savage westerners he'd brought into the service thought of it, the Spirit only knew.